by Gerald Horne
77 Testimony of Sidney Winston, circa 1943, Box 2, Folder 2.
78 Testimony of Sidney Winston, grand jury, September 1942, Box 3, Folder 2, PMEW File.
79 Statement at grand jury, September 1942, Box 3, Folder 5.
Chapter 6. Japanese Americans Interned, U.S. Negroes Next?
1 “Defendant Heard at Trial of 2 on Sedition Charges,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 14 May 1943, 3A.
2 Grand jury transcript, 22 September 1942, Box 3, Folder 1, PMEW File.
3 Testimony of Finis Williams, grand jury, September 1942, Box 3, Folder 1, PMEW File.
4 Testimony of Finis Williams, circa 1943, Box 2, Folder 3, PMEW File.
5 Testimony of General Lee Butler, circa 1943, Box 2, Folder 4, PMEW File.
6 Testimony of David Erwin, circa 1943, Box 2, Folder 4, PMEW File.
7 Release, ANP, April 1931, Reel 4, #28, Part I, Series A. The U.S. authorities thought they had reason to believe that at the time of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, “Fifth Columnists and saboteurs” were “planted at strategic points along the Amazon” in Brazil ready to pounce. Like the United States, Brazil too contained a sizeable population of Japanese origin and the federal prosecutors may have thought that these East St. Louisans’ expressed desire to migrate to South America was in aid of this larger scheme. See War Relocation Authority, “Weekly Press Review, Week Ending November, 3, 1943,” Box 3, McWilliams Collection.
8 Statements in grand jury, September 1942, Box 3, Folder 5, PMEW File.
9 Testimony of Wolcie Gray, grand jury, September 1942, Box 3, Folder 1, PMEW File.
10 Testimony of Thomas Albert Watkins, grand jury, September 1942, Box 3, Folder 1, PMEW File.
11 Testimony of Pauline Verser, grand jury, September 1942, Box 3, Folder 4, PMEW File.
12 Statement made by prosecutor in context of testimony by Bessie Fair, grand jury, September 1942, Box 3, Folder 4, PMEW File.
13 Testimony of Forest Stancel, grand jury, September 1942, Box 3, Folder 4, PMEW File.
14 Testimony of Beatrice Branch, grand jury, September 1942, Box 3, Folder 4, PMEW File.
15 Testimony of John Bedford, grand jury, September 1942, Box 3, Folder 2, PMEW File.
16 Testimony of Howard R. Bayne, grand jury, September 1942, Box 3, Folder 2, PMEW File. Interestingly, Luther Gilmer, a steelworker in East St. Louis who migrated from Laurel, Mississippi, and joined the PMEW in 1933, said that the password was “Chicana.”
17 Testimony of Harrison Fair, grand jury, September 1942, Box 3, Folder 2, PMEW File.
18 Testimony of Roscoe Standifer, grand jury, September 1942, Box 3, Folder 3, PMEW File.
19 Testimony of Cuver Vernon Young, grand jury, September 1942, Box 3, Folder 3, PMEW File.
20 Tony to “Mother and Dad,” 17 September 1942, Box II, B294, NAACP Papers.
21 Release, ANP, November 1944, Reel 29, #1052, Part I, Series A.
22 Release, ANP, January 1945, Reel 30, #251.
23 Release, ANP, February 1942, Reel 23, #947, Part I, Series A.
24 Release, ANP, January 1942, Reel 23, #750, Part I, Series A.
25 Release, ANP, February 1942, Reel 23, #791.
26 Release, ANP, January 1942, Reel 23, #841, Part I, Series A.
27 “South Africa Yields a Bit as Natives Riot: Smuts Says He Will Arm Africans Rather Than Permit Japs to Conquer,” Wichita Negro Star, 22 January 1943, 1.
28 Office of Censorship guidelines, September 1942, Reel 24, #796.
29 Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (New York: Harper and Row, 1969), 911–12.
30 Hayward Farrar, The Baltimore Afro-American, 1892–1950 (Westport: Greenwood, 1998), xi, xii, 7, 16, 17.
31 P. L. Prattis, “The Horizon: What Shall We Do When the Japanese American Knocks at the Door?,” Pittsburgh Courier, 12 August 1944.
32 Wallace Lee, “Should Negroes Discriminate against Japanese?,” Negro Digest 2, no. 11 (September 1944): 66.
33 Release, ANP, January 1942, Reel 23, #726, Part I, Series A.
34 Release, ANP, February 1942, Reel 23, #862.
35 Release, ANP, December 1944, Reel 29, #1063.
36 Release, ANP, January 1945, Reel 30, #78, Part I, Series A.
37 Release, ANP, January 1945, Reel 30, #146, Part I, Series A.
38 C. L. Dellums to Walter White, 7 July 1942, Box II, A325, NAACP Papers. At the same site, see the files on Korematsu v. U.S., and Ex Parte Endo, Box 116, Wiley Rutledge Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; and in the same collection, Hirabayashi v. U.S., Box 93.
39 Walter White to Attorney General Biddle, 10 July 1942, Box II, A325, NAACP Papers. NAACP leader Roy Wilkins caught the attention of those in charge of the internment when he distinguished what he saw as the slow, methodical rounding up of German spies and the wholesale evacuation of Japanese and Japanese Americans. “Some of the good white people,” he was said to have remarked, “say this was not a race war, but their actions deny it.” See War Relocation Authority, “Weekly Press Review, Week Ending July 25, 1943,” Box 3, McWilliams Collection.
40 Release, ANP, January 1945, Reel 30, #252, Part I, Series A.
41 “Confidential” Memorandum from Headquarters, Western Defense Command, to Commanding General, 3 May 1943, Box 125, Herbert Hill Papers.
42 Ringle to Chief of Naval Operations, 26 January 1942, Box 125, Herbert Hill Papers.
43 George Schuyler, “The World Today,” Pittsburgh Courier, 29 May 1943, 1; and George Schuyler, “Views and Reviews,” Pittsburgh Courier, 29 May 1943, 13.
44 See, e.g., Paula Giddings, Ida: A Sword among Lions; Ida B. Wells and the Campaign against Lynching (New York: Amistad, 2009).
45 Officers’ Reports and Proceedings of the 43rd Annual Convention of the California State Federation of Labor, Long Beach, Resolution No. 64, 21–25 September 1942, Box 167, Herbert Hill Papers.
46 Resolution of Moving Picture Projectionists, 21–25 September 1942, Box 167, Herbert Hill Papers.
47 “Negro Labor Leader Fights Bias[ed] Union Demands to Discharge American-Japanese Workers,” Wichita Negro Star, 11 August 1944, 1.
48 Amina Hassan, Loren Miller: Civil Rights Attorney and Journalist (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2015), 126–27.
49 Gerald Horne, Fire This Time: The Watts Uprising and the 1960s (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995).
50 Release, ANP, April 1942, Reel 23, #1243, Part I, Series A.
51 Claude A. Barnett to Assemblyman Gus Hawkins, 18 May 1942, Reel 2, #369, Part III, Subject Files on Black Americans, Series A: Agriculture, Barnett Papers.
52 “Artists of West Coast Take War in Stride,” Wichita Negro Star, 2 January 1942, 1.
53 “Twenty Colored Students per Day Register to Replace Jap Farmhands,” Wichita Negro Star, 24 April 1942, 4.
54 Release, ANP, July 1944, Reel 28, #1081, Part I, Series A.
55 Release, ANP, July 1944, Reel 28, #1140.
56 Release, ANP, November 1943, Reel 27, #198, Part I, Series A.
57 Release, ANP, April 1942, Reel 23, #1193, Part I, Series A.
58 Release, ANP, April 1942, Reel 24, #16, Part I, Series A.
59 Entry for Charles Williams in Who’s Who in California, Los Angeles, 1948, Box 7, Betty Gubert Papers, Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection of Afro-American History and Literature, Carter G. Woodson Regional Library, Chicago Public Library.
60 Release, ANP, April 1942, Reel 24, #44, Part I, Series A.
61 Release, ANP, October 1943, Reel 26, #1163, Part I, Series A.
62 Comment, Bronze 4, no. 11 (January–February 1945), Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research, Los Angeles.
63 Release, ANP, January 1945, Reel 30, #71, Part I, Series A.
64 John Larremore to Senator Bilbo, 5 October 1944, Box 1073, Bilbo Papers.
65 Charles Wills to Senator Bilbo, 24 November 1939, Box 1073, Bilbo Papers.
66 Release, ANP, August 1942, Reel 24, #743, Part
I, Series A.
67 Memorandum for Assistant Chief of Staff, 8 May 1942, 145.81.84, 145.81–91, 1942–Apr. 1943, Air Force Historical Research Agency.
68 Memorandum for Chief of Staff, 14 April 1942, 145.81.84, 145.81–91, Air Force Historical Research Agency.
69 Major General George V. Strong to “Assistant Chief of Staff, G-3,” 17 June 1942, 145.81.84, 145.81–91, Air Force Historical Research Agency.
70 Report by Major Bell Wiley, “The Training of Negro Troops, Study No. 36,” 172.1–30–172.10701–6, vol. 1, 1946–1947, Air Force Historical Research Agency.
71 John Duff to Major General Walter Weaver, 10 June 1942, 168.7061, 13 July 1945, 26 Apr. 1941–10 June 1942, Gropman, A.L. Col. 42, Air Force Historical Research Agency.
72 Mayor Walter A. Scott to Senator Pat Harrison, 4 March 1941, 145.93–80, 145.93–92, Jan. 1936–Apr. 1936, June 1941–Sept. 1941, Air Force Historical Research Agency.
73 “History of the Second Air Force,” 7 December 1941–31 December 1942, vol. 2, 432.01, 7 Dec. 1941–31 Dec. 1942, vol. 1, vol. 3, Air Force Historical Research Agency.
Chapter 7. “Brown Americans” Fight “Brown Japanese” in the Pacific War?
1 Statement by Walter White, 9 April 1945, Box II, B12, NAACP Papers.
2 Release, ANP, October 1944, Reel 29, #713, Part I, Series A.
3 Truman Gibson to Claude A. Barnett, 14 November 1942, Reel 2, #1488, Part III, Subject Files on Black Americans, Series F: Military, Barnett Papers.
4 Remarks of L. D. Reddick in New York City, 22 April 1961, Reel 4, #525, Part III, Subject Files on Black Americans, Series I: Race Relations, Barnett Papers.
5 Report, Office of the Commandant, 30 October 1925, 168.7061–30, 168.7061.71, 13 July 1945, 26 Apr. 1941–10 June 1942, Air Force Historical Research Agency.
6 Kansas City Plain Dealer, 30 January 1942. Cf. Manila Tribune, 12 April 1942: “Baron Kinochi Okura, member of the House of Peers” in Tokyo, denies that “Japan is leading a racial war against the White races. . . . [and] emphasized that complete racial equality should be advocated.”
7 “Louis Kayoes Abe Simon in 6th Round,” Manila Tribune, 30 March 1942, 1.
8 “Vargas, Aquino Urge Full Collaboration,” Manila Tribune, 23 January 1942, 1.
9 “Rizal as Impressed by Japanese Life, Culture,” Manila Tribune, 11 February 1942, 3.
10 “Vicious Intolerance of Allies Regretted,” Manila Tribune, 30 March 1942, 1. In a jujitsu maneuver, the Japanese occupation force in Manila allowed Hollywood’s most offensively racist movies to be exhibited, perhaps as a reminder to Filipinos of the insensitivity of the previous occupier. See advertisement for Birth of the Blues, featuring Negro comic Eddie “Rochester” Anderson, Manila Tribune, 11 February 1942, 4. For more on the Copernican changes that occurred on the racial front, see, e.g., Horne, Race War! Of course, the major victims of Japanese aggression were China and Korea. Colonies of the North Atlantic powers, such as the Philippines, were more likely (at least initially) to be thankful to Tokyo for ousting their immediate colonial oppressors.
11 Release, ANP, March 1945, Reel 30, #549, Part I, Series A.
12 Lin Yutang to Walter White, 9 July 1942, Box II, A402, NAACP Papers. See also Walter White, A Rising Wind (Garden City: Doubleday, 1945).
13 Release, ANP, September 1945, Reel 31, #901, Part I, Series A.
14 George Watson, Memorable Memoirs (New York: Carlton, 1987), 60. On the fraught matter of how German Nazis were at times treated with more humanity and concern than African Americans, even in the United States, see, e.g., Monique Laney, German Rocketeers in the Heart of Dixie: Making Sense of the Nazi Past during the Civil Rights Era (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015).
15 Remarks by Arthur Peterson, Sam Green, et al., in African American Voices from Iwo Jima: Personal Accounts of the Battle, ed. Clarence W. Willie (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2010), 3, 7, 86, 91, 107. See also Robert F. Jefferson, Fighting for Hope: African American Troops of the 93rd Infantry Division in World War II and Postwar America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008); and James Campbell, The Color of War: How One Battle Broke Japan and Another Changed America (New York: Crown, 2012). As late as July 1945 the Euro-American serviceman Robert Bennett “did hear Tokyo Rose again on our improvised radio. There is a pretty reliable rumor going around,” he claimed without providing evidence, “that Tokyo Rose is none other than Amelia Earhart, the woman aviatrix supposedly ‘lost at sea’—who knows?” Robert L. Bennett to “My Darlings,” 28 July 1945, Robert L. Bennett Letters, University of Georgia, Athens.
16 Hilton P. Goss, “American Experience with Subversive Activities and Their Threat to Target Systems,” March 1947, Historical Research Section, Air University, Maxwell Field, Alabama, K239.04–55A, K239.04–64, Sept. 1959–1964, Air Force Historical Research Agency.
17 John D. Silvera, The Negro in World War II (New York: Arno, 1969), n.p.
18 Enoch P. Waters, American Diary: A Personal History of the Black Press (Chicago: Path Press, 1987), 367, 372.
19 Noah Riseman, Defending Whose Country? Indigenous Soldiers in the Pacific War (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2012), 111.
20 Walter White to “Dear Folks,” 23 March 1945, Box II, A611, NAACP Papers.
21 Grand jury transcript, September 1942, Box 3, Folder 4, Record Group 21, PMEW File.
22 Release, ANP, 15 July 1942, Reel 24, #958, Part I, Series A.
23 Release, ANP, October 1942, Reel 24, #1014, Part I, Series A.
24 Release, ANP, November 1943, Reel 25, #02, Part I, Series A.
25 Release, ANP, June 1943, Reel 25, #1160, Part I, Series A.
26 Release, ANP, January 1945, Reel 30, #106, Part I, Series A.
27 Release, ANP, August 1943, Reel 26, #607, Part I, Series A.
28 Thant Myint-U, Where China Meets India: Burma and the New Crossroads of Asia (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011), 62.
29 Leon Bryan to Mary Bryan, 12 June 1945, in “A Tour of Duty: Letters from Leon S. Bryan to Mary L. Bryan from the Pacific Theater of World War II, 1944–1946, Transcripts,” 2002, University of South Carolina, Columbia.
30 Leon Bryan to Mary Bryan, n.d., in “A Tour of Duty.”
31 Release, ANP, May 1945, Reel 30, #1116, Part I, Series A.
32 See, e.g., J. Todd Moye, Freedom Flyers: The Tuskegee Airmen of World War II (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).
33 Aerospace Studies Institute, “Negroes in the AAF,” circa 1946, K239.0441–446.9, 1910–1960, 1956, Air Force Historical Research Agency.
34 Release, ANP, January 1944, Reel 28, #580.
35 See Gerald Horne, Storming the Heavens: African Americans and the Early Fight for the Right to Fly (Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 2017).
36 Letter to Dr. L. A. Ransom, 9 October 1940, Box II, B194, NAACP Papers.
37 Carl Ransom to President Roosevelt, 28 November 1940, Box II, B194, NAACP Papers.
38 “History of U.S. Army Air Service, 1862–1920,” Box 32, William Mitchell Papers.
39 “Japanese Aviation,” n.d., Box 42, William Mitchell Papers.
40 Newspaper clipping, unclear provenance, 30 January 1920, Box 28, William Mitchell Papers, Library of Congress.
41 Major General H. H. Arnold, Chief of Air Corps, to General Brett, 16 December 1940, 220.740, 220.765–2, 1940–1945, vol. 2, vol. 3, Air Force Historical Research Agency.
42 Major Ralph F. Stearley to Commanding General, 8 May 1941, 220.740, 220.765–2, 1940–1945, 1942 vol. 2, vol. 3, Air Force Historical Research Agency.
43 Press Release, 14 February 1941, Box II, B194, NAACP Papers.
44 Edward Lawson to Lester Granger, 18 January 1941, Box IF11, National Urban League Papers.
45 Brigadier General G. C. Brant to Chief of Air Corps, 18 November 1940, 145.93–80, 145.93–92, Jan. 1936–Apr. 1936, June 1941–Sept. 1941, Air Force Historical Research Agency.
46 General G. C. Brant to Chief of Air Corps, 19 November 1940, 145.93–80 145.93
–92 Jan. 1936–Apr. 1936, June 1941–Sept. 1941, Air Force Historical Research Agency.
47 Lieutenant Colonel Perry C. Ragan to President, Board of Officers, 18 March 1942, 220.765–2, 220.8635.1, 1943, vol. 4, vol. 2, Air Force Historical Research Agency.
48 Memorandum, “Outline of Plans for Colored Training,” circa 15 January 1943, 220.765–2, 220.8635.1, 1943, vol. 4, vol. 2, Air Force Historical Research Agency.
